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Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#241

Post by bberenberg »

mariusor wrote: post #231
pc86 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be how you want it to be, but it doesn't reflect reality. If you consistently have extremely low open rates (e.g. you send to a lot of people who aren't opening) your risk of being marked as spam increases. The only way to avoid this is to periodically cull your list of people who haven't opened in some amount of time.

I can understand that, but I see a couple of suggestions in the thread that are more considerate than tracking pixels. Tracking external clicks, double confirmation, etc. I consume most of my email in plain text format. Like me there are others. Your solution is not working for us.

Spend enough money with Google or MS to convince them that your opinion as an email consumer matters, then make our lives as senders a bit easier. I promise, we will appreciate it.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#242

Post by meowster »

jaywalk wrote: post #211
relix wrote: post #50

If you're running a mail newsletter, this tracking is pretty important. You're supposed to stop sending emails to someone who's not interacting with them, or you get an extra point towards being flagged as spam. Since people are already weary of clicking the unsubscribe link and instead casually mark everything as spam, every little bit towards keeping your reputation counts. It's a damned if you do, damned if you do…

I've got a system where a visitor to a web page can request to have product information emailed to them. That is the only way anyone would ever get an email from this system, and I don't even store the email address so I couldn't spam them if I wanted to. And yet, I still get a number of spam complaints every day. I don't get it.

Unintended recipients don't know it will only be a single, one-time email. To them, it looks exactly like spam. Don't look at it from your perspective, look at it from a random stranger's perspective.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#243

Post by minikites »

relix wrote: post #50

If you're running a mail newsletter, this tracking is pretty important. You're supposed to stop sending emails to someone who's not interacting with them, or you get an extra point towards being flagged as spam. Since people are already weary of clicking the unsubscribe link and instead casually mark everything as spam, every little bit towards keeping your reputation counts. It's a damned if you do, damned if you do…

>If you're running a mail newsletter, this tracking is pretty important.

Then it's exactly your job to figure out how to accomplish this in a less user hostile way.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#244

Post by grawprog »

relix wrote: post #50

If you're running a mail newsletter, this tracking is pretty important. You're supposed to stop sending emails to someone who's not interacting with them, or you get an extra point towards being flagged as spam. Since people are already weary of clicking the unsubscribe link and instead casually mark everything as spam, every little bit towards keeping your reputation counts. It's a damned if you do, damned if you do…

>If you're running a mail newsletter, this tracking is pretty important. You're supposed to stop sending emails to someone who's not interacting with them

In my experience, that's not what happens. My most recent experience with this was when I had gotten about half way through filling out my info for a service, I was sent an email with a price list, I opened it, looked at the email and decided to wait and compare prices with another provider.

Then the emails started.

'Oh hey we noticed you never finished your registration. I assure you our prices are the lowest anywhere'

Had opened the email but never answered it.

Get another email.

'Hey this is so and so, company president or whatever...if you need any more information, about blah blah blah, don't hesitate to send an email'

So I did...I told them I don't appreciate being spammed because I hadn't finished filling out a web form and i'd like them to stop.

Surprisingly, I got an email back from president dude or whatever apologizing and promising to remove me from the email list.

Yeah...right..

A day later...another email. So I blocked them as spam. I still get spam from them.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#245

Post by amluto »

leesalminen wrote: post #228
amluto wrote: post #220

The major email clients could easily fix this. Instead of having choices to not display images and display images, the choices should be no images, show embedded images, and show remote images. The latter should come with a big privacy warning and require dismissing the warning for every single email. Problem solved.

That sounds like terrible UX. Users will automatically click on the button so that they can see their email. Nobody reads pop ups.

If it’s sufficiently annoying, people won’t click it. It could work a bit like browser insecure warnings work now.

Or perhaps users could be required to click remote media to view it. Most users won’t care, so they won’t click it.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#246

Post by AMerrit »

karaterobot wrote: post #219
relix wrote: post #50

If you're running a mail newsletter, this tracking is pretty important. You're supposed to stop sending emails to someone who's not interacting with them, or you get an extra point towards being flagged as spam. Since people are already weary of clicking the unsubscribe link and instead casually mark everything as spam, every little bit towards keeping your reputation counts. It's a damned if you do, damned if you do…

A trivial point, but I don't see that anyone's made it yet: one reason it's easier to report spam than to unsubscribe is that the UX for reporting spam is a lot better in Gmail. If I want to politely unsubscribe from a newsletter I have to: switch from the keyboard to the mouse, hunt for the link in the email and click it, switch contexts to the browser tab it opens, hunt for the primary action on the page, figure ou…

Yeah, the big part of this for me is how awful lots of mailers make unsubscribing. After going to conference I usually need to unsubscribe from a bunch of new mail lists, and so many just redirect me to a vague page where I can modify the type of mail I get, clicking an unsubcribe link should just unsubscribe me, not make me hunt around on their site.

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#248

Post by [deleted] »

relix wrote: post #50

If you're running a mail newsletter, this tracking is pretty important. You're supposed to stop sending emails to someone who's not interacting with them, or you get an extra point towards being flagged as spam. Since people are already weary of clicking the unsubscribe link and instead casually mark everything as spam, every little bit towards keeping your reputation counts. It's a damned if you do, damned if you do…

[deleted]

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#249

Post by CptFribble »

This seems like thinly veiled marketing for Hey?

"There's a Big Scary Problem you probably didn't know about, according to the founder of a service that solves that problem."

[Image of what it looks like when the Big Scary Problem is solved by the service.]

[Flattering image of the service founder, and a reference to the service as 'premium.']

Re: Spy pixels in emails 'have become endemic'

#250

Post by smoldesu »

leesalminen wrote: post #228
amluto wrote: post #220

The major email clients could easily fix this. Instead of having choices to not display images and display images, the choices should be no images, show embedded images, and show remote images. The latter should come with a big privacy warning and require dismissing the warning for every single email. Problem solved.

That sounds like terrible UX. Users will automatically click on the button so that they can see their email. Nobody reads pop ups.

Most privacy-oriented email clients already do this, and it works fine in my opinion. I can read most important emails without extra formatting.
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